Hybrid-Heater. What is it?

[deimos909]

I've been trying to find out what exactly a hybrid heater is, but when I do a search I just keep getting results about hybrid cars. I'm assuming its some kind of better heater which would be nice because I'm freezing my butt off here in New England. I also looked at the Nissan web site for more information but all they say is .. it has one. Great, thanks for the info. So I'm hoping someone here knows something a bit more about what it is. Is it like a separate propane heater like Volvo was working on?

Thanks.

 

[dgpcolorado]

What Nissan is calling a "hybrid heater" is actually a heat pump, with resistance heater backup for very cold temperatures. The heat pump can be expected to use a lot less energy in moderately cold temperatures than the current 2011/2012 resistance heater. In very cold outside temperatures, there ought not to be much difference.

If you look at the graphic in this post you can see a chart of the heat pump heater versus the current "PTC" heater.

 

[ydnas7]

This is the temperature graph for 2010-2012 Nissan LEAF cell

note well
at 1C discharge rate, the effective capacity reduction is large
at 0.5C discharge rate, the effective capacity is hardly affected

any measures that reduce the rate of discharge improve cold weather performance, not just by directly reducing energy used, but also by reducing rate of energy used.

 

[KennyLewis]

I would like to comment on your freezing. You may already know that using Drive mode, not ECO, will be more comfortable in winter.